


Of Hay and Secrets

by abluestocking



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time, Fix-It, M/M, Spoilers for Broken Harbour, Yuletide Treat, hayloft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27964391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abluestocking/pseuds/abluestocking
Summary: Richie and Mick in a hayloft, in a universe whereBroken Harbourwent differently.(Explicit spoilers forBroken Harbour.)
Relationships: Richie Curran/Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Of Hay and Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kormantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kormantic/gifts).



> I loved all your prompts, kormantic! ♥ I hope you enjoy this little treat; once you started me thinking about rolls in the hay, and I knew you were a Richie/Mick shipper after mine own heart, I couldn't help but give them their happy ending.

It’s a bright cold spring day, the morning that everything changes.

They’re in a hayloft, of all outlandish places, following up a lead that Richie already knows is a wild goose chase. But when murder is involved, you head down every rabbit trail. So they’re in the countryside, up a ladder, surrounded by hay, with the cold sun streaming in and making Mick blink hard. He’s ever been a bit sensitive to light, though he tries to hide it. Now he stands at the top of the ladder, his hands in his pockets, scowling and blinking.

Richie’s on his hands and knees, systematically searching through the hay. He’s already itchy, the hay getting up under his collar. He’s wearing the sharp clothes that Mick says Murder requires, and hay is not suited to them.

“Nice work,” Mick says. “You’ll be trailing hay all the way back. If you leave a mess in the Beemer and get us relegated to a lesser ride, I want a new partner.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” 

He looks up at Mick, backlit against the sun. Mick, two years his partner, an unshakeable straight-arrow, full of self-improvement decrees and self-visualisation and an annoying amount of self-belief. He knows by now a little of what all of that covers up, and how completely Mick believes it all.

He also knows what Mick looks like running on two hours sleep for the third day running, and what tie is his favourite, and the way his shoulders relax the minutest fraction when they’ve made a collar at last. He knows the furrow of disappointment between his brows and the light of vindication in his eyes. He knows five different ways Mick laughs, and the moment he first saw Richie as more than a temporary stopgap.

“I was thinking,” he says, conversationally. There’s no clue here. A contrary witness has sent them down a dead end, for reasons of her own; perhaps they’ll even have to upgrade her to a seat at the suspect’s table, but that remains to be seen. He has a hunch it was more a kind of whimsy, inappropriate in a murder case but human nature nonetheless. _Get the scary murder detectives out of my kitchen and see how they like being inconvenienced for a change._

“Always a danger,” Mick says, though it lacks heat.

“I have far too much hay on me.” It’s in his hair now, and sticking through the tie Mick gave him for Christmas.

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“So I should share the joy.”

“What,” Mick starts, but Richie’s already lurched to a sitting position and locked his arms around Mick’s knees, tumbling him in a graceless heap into the pile of hay. 

Mick comes up spitting mad, and then they’re wrestling. Richie laughs, remembering childhood and brotherly games. They roll over and over in the hay – Richie is tolerably sure he’s got it pretty much everywhere hay can go at this point. 

Eventually Richie ends up on top, pinning Mick’s shoulders to the hayloft floor. “Got you.”

“I hate you,” Mick says, his face flushed, hay caught in his hair, sounding for all the world like a teenage girl. “I’m putting in for a new partner.”

He won’t, though. 

Richie knows squad legend, knows how many rookies Mick went through before him. He knows the test he passed, that fucking terrible afternoon where he thought about suppressing evidence and making an innocent dead man into a murderer. It was brutal, condemning Jenny Spain to face a lifetime of her grief, preventing her from joining the family she killed. He’s still not sure if it was the right thing to do, though he’s sure what Mick would say.

Mick is that precious and rare thing, an incorruptible man. Richie admires him for it, and lives in the light of his arrogant pomposity, and is fond of him. He makes Richie better, and Richie smooths his edges, and together they’re the best team in Murder. 

“Yeah,” Richie says, “you do that,” ducking his head, laughing through his nose.

Then Mick shifts under him, there among the hay, and Richie loses his breath.

This isn’t new. They’ve been dancing around it for a while now, keeping watch on each other out of the corner of their eyes. They’re detectives; it would’ve been impossible to keep a secret like this from each other, when their daily work is the uncovering of secrets. Instead, they’ve let it hum in the air, shared and unspoken, always knowing that someday, somewhere, it would out.

Richie watches Mick watching him, watches Mick letting him see Mick watching him. 

“You have hay in your hair,” he says, his voice gone strange, and kisses him.

At first he keeps the kiss gentle, like Mick might spook - but after a minute Mick growls in his throat and grabs Richie’s ass with one hand, the back of Richie’s head with the other, and after that all thoughts of gentleness are gone.

They’ve been building up to this for two years, ever since they became partners on that Spain case, ever since Mick saw something in him and let Richie inside his defences. Richie thought Mick was hot then, in an abstract well-dressed intense sort of way, full of competence and rules and what seemed like bullshit self-improvement spiels. He’d daydreamed about getting his hands on Mick’s tie, about Mick on his knees spoiling his suit, about Mick in bed arching under his touch.

Now – now they’re friends, and partners, and speak their own language, to the rest of Murder’s exasperation. They have the highest solve rate in the Squad, and they know how each other works without needing to explain. They don’t always win, but they come the nearest of anyone. 

And all the while, Richie has wanted Mick. 

And after a time, he realised Mick wanted him back.

Now Mick is here with him, in the hay, and Richie kisses him hot and desperate, as he’s longed to. “C’mon,” he says, against Mick’s jaw, half-voiced, and groans when Mick bucks up against him. 

At one point, Richie had thought that maybe Mick wasn’t making a move because of rules. You’re not supposed to work with a lover. If they took that step, by rights one of them should move to Cold Cases, or DV, or Vice. Hardly anyone respects that rule, but Mick’s the sort of person who just might take it seriously.

But then there was that case where Richie got shot in the shoulder, and he saw Mick’s face, whiter than a sheet, and he knew they were beyond rules. If something happens to one of them in the line of duty, they’re already screwed, whether or not they’re screwing. And if they start this and it ends badly, time enough to put in for a transfer then.

With Mick’s mouth on his at long fucking last, Richie doesn’t think it’ll end badly.

“This is more uncomfortable than fucking on the beach,” Mick says, aggravated, when they break apart to pant for breath. “Whose idea was hay, jaysus.”

The bright cold sun streams through the window of the hayloft, and Mick is his.

Richie leans their foreheads together and laughs, high with the joy of it.

~//~


End file.
